What's REALLY going on in politics in Loudoun County, Virginia

Tag Archives: Loudoun Lyme Disease

Still looking for ways to throw hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars down the drain to appease the pseudo-scientific local GOP claque that believes Lyme disease is an “epidemic” (it is not) and a “chronic” ailment (it is not) requiring “special” treatment by practitioners whom the medical establishment regards as dangerous quacks (they are), your all-Republican Board of Supervisors was at it again last week, tossing around the idea of spending $187,000 to hire a full-time county employee for two years to direct the pseudo-scientific and useless spraying of dangerous and useless pesticides on county parks. Hooray!

The one scientifically knowledgeable person in this whole ludicrous and insane business has been the county’s public health officer, Dr. Goodfriend, who noted in his comments to the Board last week that spraying parks is rather pointless in trying to reduce the transmission of Lyme disease since “most people get it on their own property.” This comment was met by absolute, goofy silence from our elected officials who already voted earlier this year to spend $50,000 a year hosing down the parks with chemical pesticides.

(Supervisor Ken “Ken” Reid, after all, showing his keen understanding of entomology, pledged during the election last year to “spearhead” a campaign to “wipe out” ticks in Loudoun County.) Continue reading →

After declaring, “The last thing I want to do is to go willy-nilly like last spring”—last spring being when your elected representatives hosed down nine parks in a useless, environmentally destructive, $10,000 chemical assault in order to appease the Lyme Disease loonies who for some reason have taken over the local Republican Party—Chairman Scott York (R-Kincora) voted last week along with the rest of the 9-0 unanimous all-GOP Lyme Loonie friendly Loudoun Board of Supervisors to do what looks an awful lot like . . . more willy-nillyness. Continue reading →

It’s been vastly amusing to watch our elected county supervisors attempt to bluster and bloviate their way out of the fiasco they created for themselves last spring when they declared that they were going to apply the enormous scientific resources of the Loudoun County Republican Party to eradicate Lyme disease.

This involved (a) appointing a commission filled with assorted Lyme loonies and practitioners with a financial stake in overdiagnosing Lyme disease and claiming against all scientific and medical fact that this is a rampant and chronic illness requiring (their) chronic and continued care with unproven treatments and (b) hosing down a few parks with $20,000 worth of toxic pesticides in order (as Extremely Knowledgeable Lyme Disease Expert Supervisor Ken Reid vowed) “to wipe out ticks” in the county. Continue reading →

The only thing conceivably more ridiculous than spending thousands of taxpayer dollars to spray pesticides all over 9 county parks in the hopes it will reduce the incidence of Lyme disease is . . . to do that and not even follow the application directions on when and where not to spray.

Guess which version of ridiculous our all-Republican Board of Supervisors in Loudoun opted for?

Ignoring recommended procedure (and common sense) to limit spraying to actual tick habitat along wooded edges, the Board had 62 acres of open area in Franklin Park needlessly treated

As noted previously, the Board, falling over itself to pretend to be doing something about Lyme disease, rushed to divert as much as $20,000 of existing funds from the county Parks and Recreation budget to its new tick spraying crusade (particularly fearless supervisor “Ken” Reid, never at a loss for absurdity, boldly promised to “wipe out” ticks in Loudoun County)—but without bothering to ask such niggling questions as whether this was likely to accomplish anything (other than looking busy). Continue reading →

This just in: The CEO of Blake Landscapes, Inc., which (weather permitting) will this week be spending thousands of your taxpayer dollars to carry out the Board of Supervisors’ public relations stunt in which hundreds of gallons of toxic chemicals are sprayed on 9 county parks in order to pretend to be doing something, however ineffective, against Lyme disease, would like readers of realloudoun to know that no politics was involved in awarding the spraying contract to his firm.

Although (a) the CEO of Blake Landscapes donated to the election campaigns of Supervisor Janet Clarke (R-Blue Ridge) and Chairman Scott York (R); and (b) his firm promotes on its website the identical fear-mongering about Lyme disease that the Board has found so politically useful; and (c) he quotes local GOP poohbah–Christian homeschooling/creationism guru–and Lyme nut extraordinaire Michael Farris declaring that Lyme disease is (this is a real quote, folks) “the greatest threat of our time,” he would like to make clear that everything was strictly kosher. He writes:

The spraying contract was awarded after a competitive bidding process conducted under state and local purchasing regulations by professionals in the Loudoun County division of procurement. No one in our company had any contact whatsoever with any elected officials regarding the request for proposals or award.

John Niccolls, Chief Executive
Blake Landscapes, Inc.

In other words, whipping up hysteria over Lyme disease is just business, not politics, as far as his company is concerned. Which we never doubted for a second.